The votes are being counted in Italy's general election, and for
the first time in perhaps decades the clown at the centre of things
might not be Silvio Berlusconi, but rather a comedian called Beppe
Grillo. A comedian on an anti-corruption crusade, his success (and
his political movement) has been built on the back of his blog -- the most popular
in the country, and one of the most widely-read in the world.

Grillo's blog has long hosted names of politicians convicted for
charges of corruption, and in posts the satirical comedian has
railed against the corruptions problems in Italian politics. In
2007, he corralled his supporters into a one-off "V-Day Celebratio"
where the "V" stood for vaffanculo -- "fuck off".
Other campaigns targeted certain bills or vested interests, with
the culmination being the launch of the Five Star Movement (M5S) in
2009, a populist bloc whose unifying characteristic isn't so much
what it's for as what it's against -- the status quo. Its members
organise online, it has an extreme direct democracy slant, and,
judging from exit polls and seat projections, M5S looks likely
to be the third-largest political bloc in the Italian
parliament.

The M5S phenomenon is so unusual that think tank Demos was
compelled to commission a study into it which was published last month, and it's perhaps
the best illustration of the growing disruption the web is bringing
to electoral politics. Of M5S supporters who were polled, tiny
minorities said they trusted official authority figures -- two
percent parliament, two percent financial institutions, six percent
large companies, 34 percent traditional media sources. 83 percent
were dissatisfied with the state of democracy in Italy. 76 percent,
however, said they trusted the internet.

Grillo is by far the most web-savvy of the political actors in
Italy, with vastly more Twitter followers (700k+) than pretty much
any politician, and he's used his large footprint to point out
corruption that the mainstream media wouldn't report on. He's been
quoted as saying that M5S's organisation is one of "feet on the
ground, head on the web". M5S rallies have been known to attract
more than 100,000 people at a time. In May, it won local elections in Parma, shocking the other parties who
had perhaps not taken M5S seriously.

The policies he's espoused are similarly removed from centre. A
20-hour working week, free internet for everyone, free tablets for
schoolchildren, a freeze on interest payments that could make the
country default on its debt, tax cuts for working people, stricture
rules to punish and prevent corruption, strong new environmental
laws and increased corporate transparency. There's even a proposal
to replace PIL (Gross Domestic Product in Italian) with BIL (Gross
Domestic Happiness). It's avowedly populist, and the Demos
study shows that it has attracted both left- and right-wing
voters.

Most remarkably, Grillo isn't even running for election -- M5S
bans those with criminal convictions from standing for office, and
his manslaughter conviction from 1980 (for a traffic accident)
rules him out. M5S also doesn't accept public funding for its
operations like other parties, claiming it can lead to corruption.
Grillo remains as its foundational figure and fiery evengalist, and
has sworn that M5S won't form a coalition with any other group,
eschewing all forms of compromise.

That makes things very tricky. As of writing, the results for
both of the chambers of Italy's parliament look close. Like many
countries, there are two -- the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate
of the Republic. Both are equal, but whoever gets the most votes in
the Chamber of Deputies has their share of the seats boosted to
guarantee a majority there and prevent gridlock. The centre-left
coalition, the Italy Common Good group, looks on course (as
expected) to win the Chamber, but there's no clear winner emerging
in the Senate -- Berlusconi's Centre-Right Coalition, according to
current
projections, has more seats than the centre-left Italy.
Common Good and With Monti For Italy groups combined, but neither
have enough for a majority.

Italian politics needs both chambers of parliament to be in
agreement for a cabinet to be formed, so if M5S holds firm the only
solution is for another election to be held. As far as the
world's political leaders go, they'll be hoping for a result that
delivers a coalition in parliament that bypasses the need for
Grillo to make a decision, because he's explicitly said he won't be
kingmaker. Considering Italy's economic woes -- markets are poised to panic if there's political
deadlock -- the fact that we may well see the world's
economy thrown out of a whack by a principled blogger taking a
stand is definitely some kind of watershed moment in social
media.

It's hard to think of any political party or politician who's
managed to secure such an influential position off the back of
social media. For a while it looked like the Pirate Part of Germany
might represent some kind of direct democracy revolution, but after
some promising early starts in regional elections it fell apart when trying to launch onto the national scene. Much
was made of its ability to organise policy online, with a
horizontal hierarchy only made possible at such scale by the web,
but it also seemed to create a public perception of a fractured and
unreliable group of people changing opinions on a whim. There has
also been a perception that it lacks popular figureheads.

When it comes to M5S's success, perhaps the broadness of its
anti-corruption platform and its maverick leader have solved that
problem. Or perhaps it's just the result of decades of
economic mismanagement and deep-rooted corruption driving people to
the one alternative that guarantees participation without endorsing
the current system. What happens next will be fascinating to
watch.